The Most Tested I Have Ever Been In Business [Ep# 207]

In this episode, I’m going to walk you through how the past couple of weeks have been. For me, being the most tested I have ever been in practice ever been in business ever been as a human being and how I felt beaten down, and how I got back up again. Stay tuned.

I’m Andrew Maxim. And this is the profitable practice podcast made for practitioners who are ready to build a six-figure practice with a million-dollar impact that also lets you close your laptop and be present with your family anytime you want to. Together, we will challenge the antiquated ways of running a practice, we will merge our brick and mortar online and build systemize and grow as maximized, practitioners. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello, Hello, everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the profitable practice podcast. I have got to say that I am recording this towards the end of September. September was probably the most I have ever been tested in a short period of time. But I am so grateful for the experience. And one of the major reasons why I was able to get through this and kind of formulate what I wanted to talk about on today’s episode had a lot to do with what I was going through, I knew it was going to be a fabulous episode, I went through all the emotions that I needed to and I’m going to tell you all about it. But it just so happened that in the midst of it all, James Wedmore did his podcast on how the last 12 months of his life have been the hardest he’s ever had to go through. So, there’s something comforting in knowing that when you are going through a tough time, there are other people that are also going through a tough time. And that’s why it was so important for me as I was going through it, to share on my Instagram stories and to share it with you guys that this journey is not easy. And this career choice that we’ve created of being a healer, a health and wellness coach, health and wellness mentor is a really really tough road. And a lot of that is because we made it out to be a lot of that is because pain and entrepreneurship seem to be synergistic. You know the hustle culture, the if you’re not working hard enough, you will not be successful, a lot of that has been indoctrinated into us. But also, I am still reeling from the somewhat and I’m using this word lightly, but torturous events that happened to get me to my license that allows me to maintain my license as a naturopathic doctor. And there was a ton of pain tolerance that had to occur a ton of connecting pain, struggle, long hours jumping through hoops with this is the only way I’m going to get my goal of being a licensed practitioner, there was a lot of indoctrination, there was a lot of brainwashing dare I say there’s a lot of story imprinting that happens on our journey to becoming a healer. And then we wonder why it is so friggin difficult when we’re actually trying to evolve and become our own version of what a healer looks like to us and what we want our life to look like and who we want to be attracting. So I’m really going to start leaning into this conversation a lot more on the podcast, because it is just something I’ve become so passionate about just breaking down that practitioner bubble breaking down that glass ceiling that we think we need to live by in order to be successful and starting to expose more light into the shadow that we get lost in and this journey that I went through this month is no different. And there was a lot of testing, there were a lot of negative emotions that came with it. And again, I was just so grateful that James just so happened to release his podcast on how the past 12 months have been so difficult for him in such a timely manner that it allowed me to go through this experience with a lot less ego with a lot more embracing with a lot more learning from it instead of resisting it.

And that’s exactly what I shared on my Instagram story. And I had so many people messaged me and DM me as I was doing that being like – thank you so much. This is such a lonely journey. Thank you so much. You know I’m so thrilled that you know you’re in my natural naturopathic healer world because I’m connecting with you so much. And there are so many people that watch the stories and didn’t DM me and I know, it impacted you in some way, shape, or form. I find when I post about my spiritual journey about the things that I’m doing about my crystals about my Sage stick that I did on the weekend, I get so many more people responding to that, and that just reconfirms to me how much this spiritual side this grounded state this alignment is so disjointed for so many of you. And it doesn’t mean you have to go down some “woo-woo” rabbit hole in order to achieve that, but it is so important for us to acknowledge that staying in that fiery masculine tactical, “doo doo doo” energy is typically not where the prosperity comes. And that’s where I was living this entire year. I was living in this void where I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, what was missing. Why am I not showing up the way that I used to where did my drive go? Where did my passion go? Where did my motivation go? If you go back and listen to the podcast, I recorded how January 1 2021 was my very first day where I was finally out of doing in-office consultations. And went basically hired all of my team members, put them into the right place. And I see maybe two or three patient visits every week now, virtually. And the rest of my day, I was managing the team and growing the business, and we are on track for the most revenue we have ever generated. In fact, today we are doing our weekly stats. And we have blown past what we wanted to achieve as of this moment when that’s the first time ever in my career, where we’ve actually not only set the goal but actually blew past it. And this month isn’t even done yet. So there’s a lot of things that certainly came into alignment this year.

But I was certainly lost. And I didn’t know why. Then September happens, what we did is we brought on a new team member opened up a new clinic. And I was just like, let’s just test it, let’s just see if we can bring Men’s Health into our spectrum. So I, of course, aligned with my struggling avatar, the discouraged supermom, who has kids who are struggling to re-identify her identity, who is struggling with weight loss, like I’m on a weight loss journey myself. And I’m totally in alignment with that person. But of course, you know, our ego comes in and says, Well, you can’t just pick one person, you need to expand, you need to be inclusive, you need to find all of the people don’t let people escape your grasp, just attract as many people as you can. And I fought against it for a really long time. But it’s still a difficult story for me to overcome. So we brought on a male practitioner, opened up the third clinic, and he was going to be for men’s health. And so lo and behold, it was certainly a struggle. It was not as energetically exciting as I thought it was going to be. And then the second week of September happens, I mean, it sailed little side story before I get into what happened to me in literally the span of 24 hours. At this same moment. And as I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, my word for 2021 was manifest. That was all that I wanted to choose. I knew I needed to step into this more energetically aligned version of myself. I had no idea how that was going to happen. And I just kind of like let it ride. I was like when I’m supposed to be where I’m supposed to be. Things will line up and I just have to listen to the signs. That’s how I’ve always been. And so, manifestation babe was doing her August launch manifestation babe is Katherine’s and Kina’s. And I’d heard about her but was not connecting to her all of the other times that I’ve met her. I wasn’t connecting. I was like, that’s cool. She’s cool, whatever. When this launch happened in August, I couldn’t be a part of it. I didn’t really listen to her life. I didn’t really really follow her or like, dive deep into what her things were all about what she was all about, but I could not escape this container that she created. And that was the very first time where I invested in a program literally Open Day, literally, the moment I wake up, literally, here’s my credit card, let’s go the first time. So, I needed to be in that space I needed to be in her world I needed to be in her environment. And the first piece of homework that we had on Week One was to create an intention-setting ceremony. And the intention-setting ceremony involved seven candles or one big candle that would burn for seven days, I could not get my hands on a candle that burned for seven days in the timeframe that I needed it to happen. So, I reached out to a local, like crystal candle shop, and said, this is the ceremony that I want to do. This is what I need to do, what have you got. And so, the girl on the other end totally intuitive, said, well, you can do it that way with the seven-day burning candle or we can create kind of a story with seven different votives that you’re going to light every single day, it’s going to last for maybe 15 hours of the day when it burns out or burns out the next day like the new one for the next level. So, I started with a stage candle. Day two was a peppermint candle for more cleansing and kind of like bringing up the energy than there was I’m not going to remember it all I have it somewhere. But then there was one that was just about it was a rose candle just to bring in a bit more of that love and harmony. Then there was a cranberry candle which is specifically about bringing in love. There’s a money candle at the very end there’s a lavender candle and they are all done in a particular sequence. So, I like the first candle I am so excited about this. I say my script of what my intention is I say my prayer. I like the candle and you have to bring the candle around with you everywhere. Number one because you want to be in the candle’s energetic space number two, because you don’t want to leave a candle burning in a room that isn’t occupied, right? So, safety first. So, I for seven days lit these candles and brought them with me everywhere. And day two, so like my first candle, my stage candle, everything is great feeling excited, inspired, day two light my second candle.

This is when the testing really started to happen. So, I was having a fabulous morning I was starting to get things done. Then I noticed that there was a leak coming from the roof, right over my littlest daughter Brooklyn’s room, and it wasn’t a flood of water. We had a massive rainstorm that night, massive wind gust and everything. And so, it happened to just go through the light fixture and puddle all around the corner of her bed and on top of her bed. So right under the light fixture is the bottom corner of her bed. It was also not drenched but it was soaked. So, I start the morning like that. I didn’t let it get to me. I was like okay; we’ll just find a roofer to figure it out. And of course, you go through all the worst-case scenarios, but I was just like, Whatever, let’s just find a roofer he can let us know what’s going on. Cool. So that was my morning.

Come the afternoon at around one o’clock in the afternoon, I see a ping in my inbox with the words Cono, our red regulatory board, and you have had a complaint against you. Now, all the Ontario Doctors right now are immediately feeling panic and anxiety because we have the fear of God put in us about Cono. I personally have no real negative connection with them. I totally embrace what their job is, I totally embrace what they will or will not do to protect us, whatever. I’m just like, Okay, cool. You do your thing. I’m doing my thing. And I know that team member or not, I am always in integrity to my scope of practice. So, if anybody comes at me, they don’t have a hope in hell of like getting me off this course or taking my license because there’s nothing they can do or say that I’ve done in justly. So, I see this email come in. And I’m like, okay, so I call up Cono. I’m like, what’s this all about? And I’ll do an entire podcast specifically on this complaint because talking about this complaint on my stories, also brought in a lot of practitioners being like, oh my God, thank you so much for sharing that I’m going through a complaint as well. Or, oh my god, how are you feeling? This is like my worst nightmare. I’ll do an entire episode on that, I promise. So anyway, it’s a totally unfounded issue, whatever, thank goodness, it was the person who I kind of pictured in my mind who would have made a complaint. So, everything came in alignment there. I was like, Okay, then an hour or two later as I’m processing this, because Look, guys, I’m not looking at it as like, oh, this is my learning lesson. And, you know, here’s the story that I get to take from this. I was like, trying to not feel all the fields at this point. Because, of course, shit like now I’m going to have this mark on my license for absolutely no good reason, I still have to go through all the Cono steps, I still have to do this, that or the other. So, I’m trying to, still, stay in my positive fields. And I contacted our team members, and we have a debrief and I say, this is what I’m going to do. And this is how we’re going to approach it. No problem. Here’s our game plan. Let’s go whatever. And then I have a one-on-one meeting with my Caledonia team member who lets me know that she has just gotten an amazing opportunity to work at it another practice, and she’s giving me her notice she’s not leaving, but she’s just saying, Okay, I’m going to start trickling out. So, all of this change happens in literally the span of probably six hours. By the end of my call with my Caledonia team member, Meaghan, I was just like, Okay, I’m so happy for you. I got to go now. And I just couldn’t keep it together. So, the rest of the day, I am just bawling. I still have to go pick up my kids from school, I’m holding back the tears, thank goodness, the universe knows when I need support. My mom calls me it was like the first day of school for Aria. And she’s just like, Hey, we’re in the area, can we come to pick up the kids and just debrief on how school went. I was like, yep, it sounds great. And then, so I was able to have that space, to just come home, be quiet, and feel all of the feelings.

Because of the journey that I had promised myself I was going to go on. And because I wanted to stop being in this masculine energy that I’ve been in, for the better part of the decade of my career, always trying to execute and do and hustle and work and fill up my to-do list. It was the first time where I just let the emotions flow. And I let the help that came to me. I fully embraced it, accepted it, and allow that help to support me through this time. My husband came home, and I even messaged him after. After my final call with Meaghan, I was just like, Babe, it has been the worst afternoon, I need you to step up and do all of the things when you get home like I am not okay. I didn’t eat the entire day until like eight o’clock at night. And the only reason I ate was that my husband made me a plate of food. Like that was just the state that I was in for that day. And for the rest of the week, I went through all of the emotions, I went through anger, I was angry at the person who filed the complaint. I was angry at the clinic for not supporting me and reaching out and just asking if I was okay, they immediately deflected it on me saying that I did something wrong and basically, I felt like they were saying, well, you got the complaint, you obviously did something to provoke it. So, there’s a lot of anger and resentment there. There was a lot of turmoil of is this a sign that I shouldn’t have grown a team. Is this a sign that I shouldn’t be a naturopath like I went through all of the emotions and I cried the entire day on that Wednesday. By Thursday, I had kind of regrouped, which was the following day and I was still sitting with some of those negative, angry, sad emotions, but I wasn’t holding on to it nearly as long as had this happened to me, you know, like five years ago, six years ago.

And I started to really sit with all the feelings sit with all the emotions sit with what it was that I was being tested on. And I firmly believe that because I was exercising clearing because I was exercising. You know what is it that I need to have in my life? What is it that I don’t need to have in my life, the universe in a hugely dramatic way? Show Me, you don’t need to have this extra team member This sparked a conversation between me and the Burlington office to, you know, is this the right place for you? And I was starting to get those feelings that it wasn’t. And when we had that conversation openly, you know, he was just like, you know what, this isn’t where I need to be. This isn’t really I don’t enjoy being here. It’s not something that lights me up. I’m like, Okay, cool. So, we got his notice, I had to see if I could break my contract with the Burlington clinic without paying the extra 60 days’ worth of rent. And I was just like, you know, I’m hoping you’ll let me out by the end of September – fully accepting and of course, going through all the motions if they say no if I must stay on does that mean I need to come out of pseudo retirement, I’m saying in quotations and actually start treating patients which I really didn’t want to do all these other things. So, it wasn’t until like a week later that things really got resolved. So now I went from having three practices, having all my team members to having to shut down a clinic lose one team member, another team member gives me a notice. So, I have to hire a new person in my third team member in the Oakville office is now on maternity leave. And we’ve been onboarding her replacement. So just so much change happening in one month, in one week, I should say, whereby the end of it, it was my daughter’s birthday party. So, this has been going on now for a week. By the time it came to my daughter’s birthday party, I literally had just enough energy to provide that party to the point where come to the end, and there was still some, like some of my close family members were still struggling round, I just pieced out and went into my office. I was just like; I can’t hold this space anymore. I can’t hold this level of excitement anymore. Like this was the last thing that I could offer to anybody was preparing this party preparing the food and entertaining.

In the end, as I settle through it all, I was again, full circle, I was just grateful that we cut bait from a clinic that I didn’t need to have, it was probably more of it was a test. It was a little bit of clout, a little bit of an ego thing. It was great. It confirmed to me You know what, I’m good, I don’t need to go back there, that space doesn’t serve me anymore. I’m good. We don’t need to bring Men’s Health into my practice, I’m not even going to bother, because that is just not who we are in alignment with so don’t even go there. It did show me that I can onboard new employees very easily, and they can be very successful. So that was really cool. And that was really rewarding. And then in the Caledonia office, we happen to hire someone that weekend to now come into the Caledonia office. So, it was just this beautiful exchange of Out with the old in with the new. This is all okay, I don’t need to abandon ship from my vision. And it was a test. It was a test to confirm you are staying true to this vision. You want this bad enough. Don’t let anything get you off track. It was a test to show how convicted I am to how upstanding I am as a naturopath and that if someone wants to put a complaint against me, let them like it’s not going to stop me No one is going to take my license from me go at it. I will go through the steps whatever, you know, try me so reconfirmed my conviction in how I am showing up as a practitioner and how little I am afraid of potential backlash because someone felt triggered one day. So, with all of that kind of resolving and my emotions, coming to terms with it, letting go of the blame, letting go of the resentment appreciating the journey. Not once did I feel broken. Lord knows I felt completely beaten down. I was describing to my team today that I felt like I was hemorrhaging. Like every moment someone would just put a poke a pin into my body, and I would just hemorrhage energy out of that spot. And then the next day so I want to poke another pin and I would hemorrhage out of that spot, and I felt completely exhausted and drained and beat down and not myself and not okay. But I also embraced that, and I let everybody know I was like I am not okay right now. I am not doing okay; I am so exhausted. You know, this is just the space that I’m in. I’m in “Don’t ask anything of me”.  And that was the first time I honored those emotions where I honored, being very, very upfront, and truthful about how I was feeling. I wasn’t trying to be stoic. I wasn’t saying I’m fine. I wasn’t saying, you know, it’s going to be okay. Because I honestly didn’t know. I knew it was going to be fine on the other end, but I just didn’t know how I was going to resolve it. So, during all of this, I’m like friggin loading up on crystals. Every time I heard a crystal would help to ground you, I was like, I need it in my life. I got a sage stick, and finally did my first Sage cleansing ceremony on the weekend in my office. But what I really took away from this whole thing, what I really love about this journey, is it also showed me why I was struggling this entire year. Why I felt lost, why I felt unmotivated, why I felt, and I was questioning like, Do I not want to be successful? Is it a money issue? Like what is going on with me? And it was because I was in limbo. I’ve been in limbo this entire year. With regards to what my purpose is. Who is the next level me? I don’t need to have a million dollars. That isn’t what fuels me. I like the idea of being like manifesting a million dollars in the calendar year. I think that’s really cool. But it really showed me that that was why I was approaching my business kind of like in a haphazard way why wasn’t hustling why wasn’t getting my projects done, why wasn’t showing up to my team as much as I wanted to. And I didn’t need to either, like my team hired all the new people. It was really amazing.

But this weekend just passed, I finally recognized that it was because I lost my deeper purpose because I don’t know who the identity is of the person that I want to be yet. I don’t know what that looks like. And, and that was okay. I had to let that that sit and simmer and just say this is why and it’s okay. It’s okay. You don’t have the answers. It’s okay. You don’t know who this next version of you is. It’s okay that you don’t have that hustle inside of you right now. It’s not that it will never come. But I really struggled with that I really struggled with breaking down this old version of myself, which is essentially what happened. And that tester week really showed me like everything that you’ve created is more than enough You don’t need to create more you don’t need to do more everything that you’ve created is more than enough scale that first before expanding because there’s a lot of egos involved in their opening up another clinic having another team member, I loved it. I loved the momentum of it. But I just didn’t need it. My business didn’t need it. My energy didn’t need it. And I was lost as to what kind of practitioner I was. I was just like, is it okay that I am resentful towards? You know, doing in office consultations? Is that okay, am I deflecting people? Am I not showing up for people? Am I not serving people, and I didn’t know how to be of service to these people. Because I was just over it. I was done. I was energetically spent. And throughout all of this a new certification a new designation has fallen into my lap. I am now a certified hypnotherapist and just completed that all weekend, and will be a designated hypnotherapist, probably by the time you listen to this episode.

So, within the next week, and everything has now fallen into place. I was so ungrounded especially the past couple of months, like my tech, if you guys saw my stories, my entire website crashed. My phones would not connect to the internet when I needed them to, and it was because my energy was so fiery. So ungrounded so up in the air, I was so spun, I was so wound up and I didn’t realize it. And of course, as I look back, it represented itself in all of the things like how my kids would react when I would get on a call how my dog was reacting around me how I was feeling on a given day. I was just so up in my head. So ungrounded that everything was chaos, and I couldn’t focus. And as I went through the hypnotherapy transfer transformative program this whole weekend. I was just like, Man, this is why I this is why this is the answer to all of my questions that I’ve been having. And since practicing grounding, since getting this new designation, which I firmly believe is my next step inside of being a healer that doing the hypnotherapy work, transforming people’s habits, and their deepest desires at a subconscious level is exactly where I need to be.

Now, this is where I want to stay as a healer, and still support my team as they do the in office physical work, I’m now going to make that change on a subconscious level with my maximize practitioner students, with my elite-level members, with my patients. And practicing better grounding techniques, and just showing up totally different and I had this conversation with my team, and I just felt different, I feel different. And now I’m going to ripple that out in a different way. But I had to go through all of these crazy lessons, and it came on like a tidal wave. And Scott even said, my husband, just like, babe, this is how you roll, like, everything is good. And then all of a sudden, you’ll have a wave of a ton of crap that’s going to hit you, and you get it all taken care of. And then you move on, like I move like a freight train, that’s, that’s my energy.

I’m like, this is a new project, let’s friggin hit it, you know, if all the bad stuff is going to happen, it’s going to happen once so it can be done, and I can move on from it and go forward. If I’m on a new path in life, I hit it, attack it like a pitfall. And I will go. And so that’s why it was such an awkward place for me to be all year where I just didn’t know what to bite onto, or how to be or how to show up or the type of person I wanted to become, I was just in limbo, and I had to accept that. And I fully embrace that energy now, instead of being all guilty and thinking about it that way. So, the point of the conversation today is that in order for you to grow, in order for you to become the version of yourself that you want to be, there is a ton of muck, a ton of crap. A ton of stuff that you will have to go through in order to shed those layers like this month has been a massive shedding a massive, massive metamorphosis of get rid of the old, stop the distractions reconfirming what I needed to be reconfirmed, and it’s starting to now show me where I’m going to go for the rest of the year and beyond. It’s very important that as you go through those negative struggles, you don’t take it on as it’s happening to me, why me and make it a very sort of like, desperate, sad, you know, a story that you’re telling yourself, I never went there. But I’ve exercised that muscle I’ve been through this before where I refuse to allow this to be a story or imprint on me or something like an extra piece of baggage that I’m going to carry with me. I had to allow those emotions to come negative or positive, I had to embrace them, I had to work through them. But nothing that happened to me over this past month is like a negative chip on my shoulder.

I’m very thankful. I’m very grateful for everything that the universe showed me I’m very grateful for being open and aware of what the steps were that I needed to take to get to this moment. I’m very grateful for what the universe is going to provide me for the next quarter and beyond. But I had to go through that mucky stuff and you will too and you probably are or you are experiencing the same muck showing up in multiple different ways. And it’s usually because you haven’t learned the lesson that you need to learn you haven’t done the work that you need to do to break out of that loop.

And the most important thing is if you are going through this if you are starting to make stories about how things are if you are having a difficult time reframing what’s going on with you right now, I want you to reach out to me and I’m not coming here as a guru. I’m not saying like I’m manifestation babe 2.0 or whoever I’m not, but I’m certainly ahead of the game to where you are. And that allows me to be there to support you and make your journey a lot more effortless than what I had to go through than what my mentor had to go through and so on. It happens to the best of us It happens whether we are making 10 figures, five to not 10 I meant to say for four figures. five figures, six figures, multiple six figures, seven figures. It happens whether we are working part-time, full time it happens whether we are single in a relationship Married with Children, getting a divorce. All these things will happen to you throughout your life and you want them to you want to stay on this journey of personal growth and what I love when I listen to what James talks about on his podcast, and what my mentor talks about is they always say I thought I was crushing this I thought I had manifestation down I thought I was doing all the work. I thought it was practicing all the things. And then the universe will show you know, nothing. You still have so much to learn. You still have so much growth left in you that you can’t get comfortable. No one can get comfortable. You can take a break, but you can’t get comfortable.

So, I wanted to share with you my journey this past month. I want to share the opportunity for you to reach out to me @Andreamaximnd  and tell me your story about what’s going on with you. Let me create that space of vulnerability for you so we can chat. And of course, in the show notes, there are going to be links for how you can book a 30-minute call with me or watch some of our masterclasses learn more about what we offer to support you.

Loneliness and paving this way in isolation is not what this is about. That does not make you a better healer. leaning into tribe leaning into support systems is what will make you a better healer. And that is all that I want for you.

I’m Andrew Maxim If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe so you are notified when a new episode is posted. leave a review and drop me a message on Instagram at Andrea Maxim MD as I love hearing from you. Just so you know we also host a video version of most of our episodes on maximized business.ca thank you so much for listening and I will see you on the next episode.